RaceDepartment Editor-in-ChiefStaffPremium

Bugbear Entertainment have deployed a new update to their Next Car Game: Wreckfest title - adding a new version of the American Muscle car titled 'Rammer' as well as several fixes and improvements to the game alongside updates to improve the behaviour of AI vehicles in racing situations.

Additional to the update changelog, Bugbear have released a statement regarding the current state of development with the sim, promising to add a much more regular and consistent update programme following fresh backing of the studio. The team have also given some further insight into the prospect of more cars and enhanced customisation features going forward in the development process as well as a new technology to be used in future track developments.

The full Bugbear statement and changelog are below:

"As many of you are aware, Wreckfest has been in Early Access for a considerable time. Even though there have been numerous significant improvements along the way that will make the game indefinitely better in the end, understandably some of you have been concerned that the final game will never see the light of the day. We understand this and would like to address these concerns with this statement: Wreckfest always has been and always will be our first-priority project, and we are 100% committed to create a game where all of us (you, our faithful supporters, and us, as its developers) will be proud of. As a further sign of our commitment, we would also like to share the upcoming steps with you:

We found a partner that will enable us to fully commit to Wreckfest all the way to its completion.

We will be servicing the game with more frequent and rich monthly updates, starting in February.

Wreckfest is our main focus, and we will increase our team size to speed up its development.

Since we’re now approaching the last leg of the development, we need renewed focus, and now it’s the perfect time to play the game and participate in the development by submitting feedback to us. We can’t stress enough how much your feedback means to us. We will be adding new features and content in the next months to come, and by giving feedback, you can help shape the game in a meaningful way!

To kick things off, we’ve created a survey to gauge your feedback. If you haven’t participated yet, please make sure to do that now. And even if you have, please check back after testing the latest update to give us your opinion about it. The survey can be accessed by directing your browser here. Let your voice be heard!

Now that all the hard facts on our end are on the table, let’s move on to the juicy stuff: the latest update! In this update, we’ve concentrated on improving the gameplay and ironing out pesky little issues you’ve been reporting. For example, cars are now less prone to being thrown sky-high after landing a jump, rollovers are more forceful, and so on. AI also offers a much more rewarding racing experience now, thanks to being given more situational awareness and heaps of badass attitude. Controllers and driving assists have also been improved – if something feels off, please try resetting your advanced controller settings to default. Oh, and there’s one pretty neat little feature: check out what happens when you crash into a slow-going AI car flat-out!

Content-wise, this build introduces a reworked Gravel track with cleaner geometry, more rolling terrain and generally just better gameplay. While not yet polished, the reworked track also gives you a first look at our new environment set called Fields that will also be used for some other tracks. It represents a US Mid-Western environment will rolling hills, open fields and some urban structures. All in all, we think it will be a perfect match for bringing our kind of high-action racing stateside!

Another piece of new content is a banger version our trusted American 2 sedan, aptly nicknamed Rammer! Rammer is a special kind of car because it features an alternative handling model for you to try. We’d love to hear what you think of it and whether it’s something that you’d like us to pursue further. As intimidating as Rammer looks on track you’re probably wondering why there haven’t been completely new cars for a while, and that’s a very valid question. The reason for that is that we’re currently implementing visual upgrades (rims, derby parts, cool stuff like that!) to the game and introducing completely new cars at this point would mean a significant amount of work that we would have to throw away and redo after the upgrades are in. So, hold on for a bit longer for completely new cars!"​

Wreckfest December Changelog

Content

Replaced Gravel track with a new, improved version with cleaner geometry, more rolling terrain and generally just a lot better gameplay. While not yet polished, the reworked track also gives you a first look at our new environment set called Fields that will also be used for some other tracks. It represents a US Mid-Western environment will rollling hills, fields and some urban structures. All in all, we think it will be a perfect match for bringing our kind of high-action racing stateside!

Replaced the main route of Tarmac 3 with a shorter, rallycross inspired route.

Added a new American 2 banger variant.

Art

Improved art Speedway 2.

Improved art on Sandpit 2.

Improved art on Mixed 1.

Added more trackside objects to many tracks.

Implemented animated spectators among static ones.

Added spectators to many tracks previously missing them.

Implemented more vibrant post-processing.

Design/Physics

Improved gamepad controller: the steering rate now fluctuates significantly less in different driving situations, and it’s now easier to countersteer even when Speed Sensitivity is applied (by default, 75% for both gamepad and keyboard). We recommend that you start by resetting your in-game advanced controller settings and tweak from there.

Stability Control assist now correctly detects vehicle slide angle, making cars less vulnerable to over-correcting when counter-steering, a sympton that often resulted in the car spinning in the opposite direction or rocketing out of track. Note that as a result you may need to adjust your Stability Control strength, so please play around with the setting.

Improved Traction Control assist for reduced bog-down effect.

Far Chase Camera is now higher and further away.

Light dynamic objects like traffic cones no longer cause damage to the car.

It’s now easier to shatter small wooden structures, making it easier to get back into action after spinning out and stalling behind them.

Steering wheel no longer gets dislocated when the car has deformed (it too can deform, however).

Improved surface dynamics, so rollovers are now more violent with less sliding around when the car is on its roof or side.

The car no longer bottoms out as easily on heavy landings, something that earlier on resulted in the car being bounced into air due to collision penetration.

The car no longer drifts around in garage and elsewhere (may still occur on angled surfaces).

Arm-cos and other heavy trackside barriers are now less prone spin the car around in light contacts.

High-speed crashes involving cars with a significant speed difference are now more violent.

Tweaked gameplay damage to encourage more tactical gameplay: health damage from being hit is lower with 100% armor sector and higher with 0% armor sector, so you need to eyeball the opponent in order to hit them where it hurts (and of course try to protect the damaged sections of your own car).

AI is now less likely to cause harm to the player in light contacts.

AI is more aggressively trying to overtake.

AI no longer keeps pushing on after bumping into another car but depending on the situation eases throttle and/or applies brakes.

AI now reacts in a couple of different ways when bumped into, depending on the strength of the impact.

AI now yields a more appropriate challenge dynamically for various levels of players.

Player can now choose AI class from pre-made sets.

Technical

Server no longer crashes when a race event comes up after a derby.

Optimized foliage and clutter shaders, improving performance.

Optimized culling, improving performance.

Fixed horizon draw order.

Additional notes for content creators:

Some very old textures were removed or moved around, so in case you’ve used any of our textures in your creations please check them for missing textures (purple assets).

The game no longer crashes when no bend is detected for AI logic, an issue with certain custom oval tracks that had very long sweeping bends.

You can now create a custom AI set for your modded vehicles and/or a cup mod that the user can pick (located in property/career/ai_sets).

All camera modifications will need to be updated, otherwise your users won’t have the new Chase Camera Far.

Next Car Game: Wreckfest is available to purchase for Windows PC in Early Access now. A proposed console release is due sometime in 2017.

Check out the Wreckfest sub forum here at RaceDepartment for the latest news and discussions regarding the game. Head over to the forum and join the discussion today!

WereslothStaff

As much as I love the concept of this even 17 euros seems too high for the amount of content it has. Admittedly it's always looked very fun (Failrace's videos have been fantastic at showing how ridiculous races can get) but it's in the same price range as AC and rF2. Again those aren't direct competition but still.

If they can make a fleshed out career mode like in the older Flatout games in the next 6 months I'll take a serious look at it.

Premium

I personally really enjoy Wreckfest and fire it up on a regular occasion for something different as the Graphics / Audio/ FFB are very decent and it is good to see there has been some fresh backing for the studio...keep chipping away at the big picture Bugbear.